Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Tales of the Cloister, by Elizabeth G. Jordan. There are not quite as many dreamy women gazing soulfully at each other as in Tales of the City Room, although the first story starts us off with a bang with this deliciously tart description of a schoolgirl crush: convent student May Iverson “wrote notes to Sister George concerning the bitterness of existence, and put roses on her desk in the class-room, and laid bare her heart to her whenever that dignified woman could be induced to inspect the view, which was not often.”

I found the collection as a whole not quite as strong, but a couple of the individual stories stronger than anything in Tales of the City Room. “Under the Black Pall” in particular brought me close to tears (at work, too, for shame!) as a study in loneliness: as she takes her final vows, a nun looks back on her life and thinks that “In the world, even in the cloister, there seemed to be drawn around her a circle which no one passed.”

What I’m Reading Now

John McPhee’s Oranges, which is a delight! It’s a slim book (150 pages) packed with fascinating facts about the biology and history of oranges. Did you know that if you plant a seed from an orange, it might come up as a lemon, a lime, a grapefruit, a citron, or any one of various other citrus plants? It’s true! It’s weird! I love it!

What I Plan to Read Next

I may continue my John McPhee journey! He wrote a book called The Ransom of Russian Art, which is about an American collector who amassed a huge collection of unofficial Soviet art, and, well, you know me and the Soviets.

Comments

[asakiyume]

and laid bare her heart to her whenever that dignified woman could be induced to inspect the view, which was not often. owwwww, burrrnnnn!

Now I absolutely want to plant an orange seed and see what I get!

[osprey_archer]

If you do plant an orange seed, please report back! Although it might be some time before you find out what you've got...

[asakiyume]

Oh I definitely will.** And I've put the book in my to-read list on Goodreads so I remember that I want to read it.

**Meaning both that I'm definitely going to plant a seed and definitely going to report back. But yeah, it may take years (if ever) before I get a fruit. SO I GUESS WE WILL JUST HAVE TO KEEP UP OUR FRIENDSHIP.

ETA: You should plant one too! We can keep notes together.

[osprey_archer]

We can call it the friendship tree!

However, if it is going to be a friendship tree, it might be better if I do NOT plant one, as I am very good at killing plants... Bad symbolism.

[asakiyume]

When I told him, Wakanomori said, "We need to plant several seeds to see if we get several different things," and I had to say, "Have you looked at our house? Have you looked at how we're situated for windows and what's currently *in* the windows?" (Namely two loquat trees and a jasmine vine.) He said, "We can rearrange the bedroom." LOL, so he's on board.

[osprey_archer]

McPhee tells a story about two guys who got 250 seeds from Persian limes, and they planted all the seeds and they came up as lemons and kumquats and oranges etc. etc., and all their citrus pals were impressed that they got TWO whole Persian lime trees out of it.

[asakiyume]

Oh so can we do it with lemon seeds? Because Wakanomori deliberately saved out some lemon seeds, and I said, "Osprey Archer said oranges could produce Every Citrus but she didn't say the same was true for those other citrus," but is it? Because if so we're good to go!

[osprey_archer]

I think the same thing is true of lemons (and the internet says that lemon seeds don't grow true to type), but certainly to a lesser degree than to Persian limes and possibly to a lesser degree than oranges, too. (However, Persian limes have so few seeds that the researchers had to trawl through the pulp leftover at a limeade factory to get their 250 seeds, so it's no good holding out for Persian lime seeds.)

[asakiyume]

Mmmmm, I will get oranges. I want to experience the full effects of randomity. What happens if I grow the lemons and get nothing but lemon trees???? THAT WON'T DO.

[osprey_archer]

You waited five years for those trees to grow and they're ALL lemons?? A TRAVESTY.

[asakiyume]

"If life turns your lemon seeds into lemon trees ... "

[skygiants]

I gotta read Tales of the Cloister.

JOHN MCPHEE HAS A SOVIET ART BOOK?

[osprey_archer]

YES HE DOES. In fact he has a huge number of books, but the Soviet art book is the one that jumped out at me.

Will be interested to hear what you think when you read Tales of the Cloister!

[osprey_archer]

Have checked into it more and am devastated to discover that the library's copy of the Soviet art book Does Not Circulate. SO frustrating.

I'm not even sure if this particular library is open to the public, although presumably as a library employee I can get in. It seems kind of mean to include the books in the library catalog when they're only semi-accessible.

[lucymonster]

I’m going to have to see if I can get my hands on either of those John McPhee books. I’ve been looking for more things to read that aren’t miserable books about politics and war, which is where my attention seems to be gravitating at the moment.

[osprey_archer]

This is the only McPhee book I've read, but he wrote MANY and many of them seem to be pretty short, so they definitely might be a good place to start if you're looking to add a little more variety/a little less war to your reading life. (Although for all I know some of his many books ARE about war. As I said, he wrote MANY.)